


doma

by thefudge



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Married Life, Soviet Union, Trauma, ost: the entire soundtrack of irony of fate (1975), soviet aesthetics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28001916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: “I love the way you say medicine box,” she murmurs silkily.  (or the married life of the Borgovs)
Relationships: Vasily Borgov/Beth Harmon
Comments: 23
Kudos: 258





	doma

**Author's Note:**

> how many other stories can i write about these two? i guess we'll find out. this can be read as a sequel to "bete" but not necessarily. in fact, the tone of this one is a little different.   
> also, i know that "dom" is the singular for house/home and "doma" is the plural, but I just like how "doma" sounds, okay? let me have this.   
> the song for this story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NupNn36bzk (this is a scene from one of my favorite movies ever, and the song is based on Marina Tsvetaeva's poem "I like...". it always leaves me aching) 
> 
> hope you enjoy!

He finds her sitting on a little stool next to the yellowed tub, eyes swimming in tears.

Vasily always marvels at the way this little woman can bend him in half. Before he knows it, he’s on his knees, looking up at her. He places his large hands tentatively on her knees.

“Liubimaya, what is it?” he asks

She shakes her head. “Nothing, I’m being silly.”

“Have they cut off the water again?” This was a common occurrence in the city, due to all kinds of fuel-saving policies. Russia was a cold country, after all. One did not carry sweat under armpits. Why the need for so much bathing?

Beth shakes her head again. “No. But I have to boil some over the stove, because we don’t have any hot water.”

“I will do that. You rest.”

“That’s not why –” Another sob wracks her small frame. She turns her face away. She hates crying. She hates to be seen crying. But Vasily will not have her hide from him. He gently wrests her chin towards him, thumb wiping a large, hot tear from her cheek.

“Lizoshka, you can tell me anything.”

There is a small, ugly fear at the back of his mind, like a touched nerve. Always there, the fear that she regrets this. Regrets him. The fear that she wishes she had never embarked on this mad endeavor with him. And an even greater fear that she regrets the baby too, and perhaps wishes she could get rid of it. He knows this is a cruel, unworthy thought, insulting to his new wife. But it is there, all the same. His eyes land on her round belly, now more visible despite her blowsy dressing gown. He wants to rub his cheek against that belly, but he only _thinks_ these foolish things, he rarely acts on them.

Except – when it comes to Beth, he _has_ acted foolishly many times, but he cannot bring himself to regret it. He hopes she does not either, but he cannot be sure.

“I’m sorry,” she says, turning cold under his fingers, “I’m just being silly. Could you heat up the water?”

She has closed the door against him. It’s quite useless to try to pry it open. Beth alone can open it.

Vasily has enough sang-froid to lift himself up without flinching. He walks blindly towards the kitchen. He takes out a big pan from the cupboard and fills it up with ice-cold water. Then he transfers it to the stove.

He almost laughs. They’re out of gas. He must take the gas tank for refilling. He could call one of the “Komitets” to fetch some gas for him. They have made it clear that the services he has rendered to party and country, in that order (particularly securing a _second_ Grandmaster in the figure of his American-born wife) are a lifetime guarantee of domestic supplies and black market goods that only the nomenclature enjoy. But Vasily is loath to use their services. Whenever he can, he manages on his own. _They_ manage on their own, he reminds himself.

He pauses by the bathroom door as he shrugs on his coat.

“Where are you going?” asks his wife quietly.

Vasily lifts the gas tank without saying anything. She watches him go.

Varvara wrote him a devastating letter the night before his nuptials.

_I saw your “nevesta” on television the other day. I think I finally understand why you fell in love with her. It took me a while to see it, I confess. She is exactly like you, Vasya. She is a pretty mirror. It’s true, most of your life, you have not been allowed to see yourself as you are. Of course you fell in love with your image. You are the only man who did not do so out of narcissism. I believe you are learning about yourself. I believe she is too. I wish you all the happiness, sincerely. Sasha wishes you happiness too._

It had nearly undone him, especially since Varvara had not allowed their son to come to the wedding. She feared that Sasha liked Beth too much, liked her especially as a glamorous older sister. Beth had made little effort to act motherly towards him. They did, in fact, act like siblings around each other, a fact which Vasily secretly liked, in spite of the unorthodox circumstances.

Yet, he would have liked Sasha there. A month after the wedding, the boy came to visit him and Beth in their new apartment and he brought with him a very odd-looking toy gun that had been given to him by Varvara’s new lover. Beth pretended to hide behind the couch as Sasha tried to shoot her. When Vasily returned from the kitchen with cake, he found the two of them rolling on the shaggy carpet, tickling each other. It was all in good fun, but he could see right away that Beth would never exert any motherly influence. And he wondered how she would fare with her own child. By this time, she was already pregnant and he was beginning to have all sorts of unfounded fears he couldn’t share with her.

He was content to watch her laugh with his son.

Later, when Sasha fell asleep right there on the carpet, Beth eyed him slyly and crawled on her hands and knees towards his seat on the couch in a feline display of seduction and set her hands on his knees and placed her head on the seat of his trousers and Vasily stood very still, not giving in a single inch. Beth looked up at him with pools for eyes. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but that would have broken the spell. He would never get tired of this breathless charm, this silent battle between them. It was more exciting than any game, more profound than any sort of sexual dalliance. He almost hated how much he loved her, this odd child who had never been a child.

He sat there with her head on his knees.

It takes him a few useless hours waiting in the cold to fill up the gas tank. The queue moves fast today, mercifully. He tries not to let dark thoughts overtake him. He cannot imagine going back to any other kind of life. If Beth wants to leave him, if she has changed her mind, he will allow her to go without much fight, because he could not bear being her jailor, because he’d rather she were miles away from him than miserable in his own home. He lugs the gas tank after him, remembering suddenly that not so recent story about that American poet who put her head in the oven. They made a great deal of fuss in the newspapers over here, decrying bourgeoisie decadence and hysteria. He thinks about what it would be like to do something so clean and terrible. Of course, he would never end his life because he has a son and he will soon have another child and – Beth, _gone_ –

He shrinks at the thought. No, Beth cannot leave him. He will block all her exits, as he did once, as he _still_ does when they play the occasional game. And if she happens to slip past him, he will chase her down.

He stops in front of their block. He stares up at the grey-blue sky. God, he’s such a fool. Such a terrible fool. He has already lost to her. From the first moment he saw her, he lost.

He must put down his King for good.

As he steps through the door, he sees her silhouette at the end of the darkened hall.

Her puckish red hair is fluffed and freshly washed and she is wearing one of her Paris dresses under a red and white apron. She flashes a smile at him.

“Finally. I’ve been making schnitzels. Now we don’t have to eat them raw.”

And she shows him her flour-stained fingers. Then she disappears into the kitchen. Vasily grounds himself. This could be the sunshine before the storm.

He deposits his coat, takes off his shoes, goes to wash his hands. He takes the gas tank into the kitchen.

Beth is still stretching the meat with the rolling pin. Her schnitzels look more like blini. He smiles.

“Your hair,” he says. “You had a bath?”

Beth nods, pleased with herself. “I used to take cold baths all the time when I was a kid.”

Vasily blinks. “No – you – you shouldn’t have done that. The water must have been like ice. You will catch a cold.”

She wrinkles her nose with a mischievous smile. “I’m strong as an ox. A little cold never did me any harm.”

Vasily goes to her, runs his fingers down her bare arms. She feels hot and feverish to the touch. Beth shivers a little, looks up at him with half-lidded eyes, which somehow make them larger.

“I’ll fetch the thermometer, you might have a fever. You really shouldn’t have –”

Beth catches his hand. “I think you’re the one with the fever. Sit down and watch me ruin these schnitzels, will you?”

He offers more weak protests, but she simply will not hear it. She threatens to turn on the radio and force him to listen to one of the turgid Soviet plays that normally air at this hour.

He sits down, brows darkened, yet the corner of his mouth turned up into a reluctant smile. She is such a little mistress.

She chuckles under her breath.

“Fever.” She says it slowly, like a code name.

He tilts his head. “What?”

“Oh, just a song I used to listen to.”

He’d ask her to hum it to him, but she can barely hold a tune which is a pleasant contrast to Varvara, who was once the brightest star of her Pioneer choir.

“Did you always take cold baths at the orphanage?” he asks after a while.

Beth stirs the oil in the pan. “Um, not always. But there was never enough hot water to go round for a dozen girls a bathroom.”

She rarely talks about the privations of her youth, probably because they are similar to his and so he already knows the story. Still, he would like to hear it from her.

“Do you still think about that place?”

He did not mean to ask it so harshly, so nakedly, but his tact is only reserved for chess, and even there…

“Not so much these days,” she says, stiff back turned to him. “Only the basement is still clear in my mind. The rest is getting foggy, even though I visited not too long ago.”

He hums noncommittally. Did she remember it today, he wonders? Did the fog dispel?

Beth turns suddenly towards him. She folds her arms pointedly and leans against the counter. There’s a smudge of flour on her cheek.

“That’s not why I was crying today.”

“Oh, no, I –”

“And you _should_ have said something when you left to get gas.”

Vasily lowers his head. “I didn’t think there was need to spell out–”

“There _was_. You looked like a dog who’d been kicked. I felt horrible thinking about it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“If and when the reason for my sadness is you I’ll let you know quite plainly. I’m pretty good at telling people off, in case you haven’t noticed.”

He accepts her chastising. Her imperious tone secretly delights him, how easily she turns into that little mistress. 

Behind her, the schnitzels sizzle in the pan.

“ _Will_ you let me know?” he asks tentatively. “You often leave out many things, whether you mean to or not. I wish I could read your mind sometimes.”

And in his voice, he recognizes the old chessman who wanted to understand this bright girl’s outlandish, daring moves on the chessboard.

“You wouldn’t want that, trust me. _I_ rarely want to be inside my own head. For better or worse, this is who I am. It has nothing to do with you.”

Vasily rubs the side of his jaw. “I wish I could be involved. I wish you would involve me.”

“You are _plenty_ involved since you keep me _out_ of my head. Oh, and I love you, of course, which distracts me long enough.”

He shakes his head, a fond smile on his lips. He never tires of hearing her say it, but he tries not to show his pleasure too intently.

He’s about to say something about his love for her, but she quickly turns around and takes the pan off the stove.

“Oh, good, burnt to a crisp! Just like we like them!”

Oddly enough, her schnitzels are actually good, though smoky. She has also made an olive and potato salad, the olives, a gift from an official, too old and dry to even be chewed, but the taste is strangely delicate. They eat in companionable silence. He touches her arm from time to time to check for a fever. He touches the hollow of her throat to check for a pulse. He touches her forehead. Beth submits to these touches with a roll of eyes and tender smile.

As soon as dinner is finished, he fetches the thermometer from their bedroom. Beth grudgingly stuffs it into her armpit. It turns out she does have a small fever.

Vasily orders her to bed immediately. He takes out a pair of dusty woolen quilts from the large family wardrobe in the hallway.

Beth laughs at him. “I’m pretty sure those old things will kill me faster than a cold.”

But she submits to his attentions.

He tucks her into bed, pulls the quilts all the way to her chin.

“I’m going to look through our medicine box, see what I can find. Then I will make tea.”

“I love the way you say medicine box,” she murmurs silkily. “Could you lie down next to me for a moment? I promise I will let you look for aspirins later.”

Vasily goes over to his side of the bed. He sinks his weight next to hers. He never gets tired of the strange feeling of having her in his bed. He gently caresses locks of hair away from her face.

Beth licks her lips. “I hope you won’t find this offensive but I think I need a different kind of medicine right now.”

She sits up abruptly, leaning her body over his, the quilts gliding down her shoulders. He tries to cover her again but she’s already fumbling with his belt, deft little fingers working him free in no time. 

Vasily stills.

“Beth.”

“Pregnancy craving,” she says by way of explanation and quickly takes him in her mouth. What immediately uncouples him from reality is her mouth, her mouth going wide, like a snake, when he sees the dark ceiling of that mouth. She looks so hungry. She strokes the base of his cock as she tries to swallow more of him, the tip of it almost hitting the back of her throat. Vasily chokes. _She_ doesn’t choke. He stutters shamefully and tries very hard not to sink his hands in her hair. She has no problem sinking her nails in the exposed flesh of his thigh. She eats him messily, gorges herself on his cock. She makes him fuck her mouth in the most helpless way possible. He is entirely hers and he is entirely in her mouth. The pools of her eyes wash over him and carry him over the edge. Towards the end she sucks on him slowly, languidly, taking him out of her mouth and coating him in her saliva again and again, and at the very end, when he’s saying syllables of her name, she holds him over her lips, the tip inside her mouth, and keeps very still as he comes over her tongue. She swallows his seed like medicine. It’s invigorating.

Vasily stares up at the ceiling. He feels destroyed. Only she can do this.

He utters a colorful expletive, very _unlike_ him, and Beth smiles, lowering her head on his now soft cock. She kisses the warm flesh.

“I was thinking of my mother,” she tells him softly. “When you found me crying.”

Vasily doesn’t know if he should cover her in the quilts again. He waits for her to continue.

Beth takes a small, shuddering breath. “I never told you how she died. How she wanted me to die with her. She had it all planned out.”

The entire story comes out terribly stark and absurd in that silence. Beth gets it all out without a single tear.

Halfway through, Vasily reaches out to touch her face, her hair.

At the end, he picks her up gently and pulls her into an embrace, cradles her into his chest, puts his hand over her head. She doesn’t cry, but her shoulders shake a little. He simply holds her, lips pressed into her hair. He thanks God, a presence he rarely calls upon, for preserving her life, for allowing her to escape her mother’s fate.

Beth murmurs something into his chest.

“What if – when the baby is born I – I feel like my mother and I do something bad –”

Vasily lifts her chin.

“No. Impossible,” he says simply, knowingly, more sure of this than anything. The doubts have disappeared.

“How do you know?”

“Because you are full of love,” he says, staring into her eyes. He thinks of how she used to watch him from afar, how she used to watch everyone, silently craving. “Every part of you screams love. You only want to love and be loved in return. You’ll probably smother the child with love.”

She gives a shaky laugh, eyes luminous with that same love.

“Yes, I will.”

“Yes, you will,” he agrees and kisses her softly on the lips.

He looks at his mirror. Varvara was right. He sees himself exactly. They are both learning so much.

He warms her belly with his hand and she lowers her head on his chest. They fall asleep, medicine box forgotten.


End file.
